Chinese Political Scandal

Anyone following this story involving political corruption and murder of a British expat?
The Times has been all over it: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/bo_xilai/index.html

Fascinating all around. Great reporting and storytelling by the Times reporters.

Should eventually make a great book and/or movie. Could also cause a lot of problems for top Party members, most of whom probably also have similar financial dealings.

This is a fabulous scandal, YF, which I have followed in both the Times and the Journal. It appears tabloid fodder may be another area where China is passing us.
Also, I do not envy the chaps who will be given power in China later this year. The Party is getting more than a little frayed in terms of discipline, or even the power to make things happen.

China's leaders want Bo Xilai's downfall seen as a blow against corruption — not as part of a power struggle. But with a second, even higher-ranking Politburo member now suspected to be under pressure, it will become difficult to avoid the perception of all-out infighting.

Moves against Zhou Yongkang, China's security chief, could undermine attempts to portray the Bo scandal as a fight to uphold the rule of law and would reinforce a skeptical public's view that the Communist Party is in disarray months before a once-a-decade transfer of power to new leaders.

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I wonder if my former colleagues in Beijing are jealous while being starved of all this fun controversy or if they're able to get the really good stuff.

Well, it's a safe bet EVERY Party bigshot has violated many of the country's laws, and likely has stolen with both hands and feet. So any of them can be removed in a power struggle for cause. Makes it fun!

The dramatic nighttime escape of a blind rights lawyer from extralegal house arrest in his village dealt a major embarrassment to the Chinese government and left the United States, which may be sheltering him, with a fresh diplomatic quandary as it seeks to improve its fraught relationship with Beijing.

Chen Guangcheng, one of the best known and most politically savvy Chinese dissidents, evaded security forces surrounding his home this week and, aided by an underground network of human rights activists, secretly made his way about 300 miles to Beijing, where he is believed to have found refuge in the American Embassy, according to advocates and Chinese officials.

An official in the Chinese Ministry of State Security on Friday said that Mr. Chen had reached the American Embassy, but American officials would not confirm reports that Mr. Chen had found shelter there.

Mr. Chen’s escape represents a significant public relations challenge for the Chinese government, which has sought to relegate him to obscurity, confining him to his home in the remote village of Dongshigu and surrounding him with plainclothes security guards, even though there are no outstanding legal charges against him.

The case also poses a major new diplomatic test for the United States. In February, the Obama administration was thrust into an internal Chinese political dispute when Wang Lijun, the top police official from the region of Chongqing, sought refuge in the American Consulate in Chengdu. Mr. Lijun revealed details about the killing of a British businessman, setting off a cascade of events that led to the downfall of Bo Xilai, who was the party chief in Chongqing and a member of China’s Politburo. American diplomats said they had determined that Mr. Wang’s case did not involve national security, and they turned him over to Chinese officials, prompting criticism in Washington about their handling of the case.